Shrier’s book is giving parents permission to rethink the therapeutic paradigms that have dominated child-rearing literature for a long time now. She gives parents permission to see their children as moral agents who need their character formed by loving parents rather than as merely victims of an array of alleged pathologies that require third-party interventions... Continue Reading

The Aaronic blessing not only contains but also anticipates the greater fullness of seeing God face to face, seeing our Creator and our Redeemer as he is, and as a consequence, sharing in his divine life, sharing in his beatitude, his blessedness.   The ultimate climax or aim can be seen, first of all, from... Continue Reading

The spectacle of the distress of Mary and her companions enraged Jesus because it brought poignantly home to his consciousness the evil of death, its unnaturalness, its “violent tyranny” as Calvin (on verse 38) phrases it. In Mary’s grief, he “contemplates” — still to adopt Calvin’s words (on verse 33), — “the general misery of... Continue Reading

Set your eyes on eternity. This is not a means of ignoring reality, but the only way of truly facing it. There is a day when all the pain you suffer from the presence of sin and Satan will vanish. Focus more on your future accounting before Christ than on those who fail you on... Continue Reading

The subject matter of ‘Impossible Christianity’ is important and weighty, but DeYoung has a winsome way of communicating, and a few times I laughed out loud. Though a small book of 128 pages, it contains much food for thought, and the book might be better digested by reading it with others and discussing it together.... Continue Reading

Today, it’s a common thing to hear people claiming to hear messages from God. The “God told me” language is a cancer within the body of Christ that must be rooted out. This language is published in books, repeated in powerful stories by conference speakers, and is embraced as normative practices in many local churches... Continue Reading

 Jesus Calling isn’t what we do in the PCA. PCA ministry doesn’t do that. Let’s just drop it. It is pointless. Who needs to dwell on things vaguely unpleasant? Methodists are Methodist, and they are Christians. Who should judge another man’s servant? I’m busy doing God’s work. That book doesn’t belong in my sphere of... Continue Reading

For Christians who understand that human beings are more than matter that can be molded and medicated, the need for a book like this is even more obvious. Divine revelation and millennia of insight suggest that much of what passes for “psychological trauma” today is spiritual brokenness. Spiritual healing can take the form of counseling... Continue Reading

For the vast majority of children, mental-health treatment will not be necessary. Kids are resilient. Just as a smoker who quits will immediately boost his life expectancy, kids who spend less time and attention on platforms designed to be addictive and anxiety-inducing have a chance to bounce back. Haidt’s proposals can help give them that... Continue Reading

The focus of our gaze must be upward and forward, not backward or around us. There must be a longing in our hearts for the beautiful city of God, combined with a holy indifference to the things of this world that we always will all inevitably leave behind us. Even the good things in our... Continue Reading